bvandiepenbos wrote:I have a customer that wants a printed bracket part that will be in a continuous steamy environment at 100c up to 150c at times.
Any suggestions on what is the best filament for this application?
I am thinking ABS would be fine, but I don't really know for sure.
What temperature does ABS start to soften?
Nylon would be bad since it absorbs moisture and gets limp, correct?
The bad news is you're wrong about ABS : it starts soften around 105-115°C (but it's very difficult to say because quality of the material plays a lot), and soften more and more with temp elevation. This is very progressive, this is behaviour for a amorphous material (abs come from the styrene family , which are the most amorphous plastics)
The good news is you're wrong with nylon, too.
Far away from pla, abs or other hips. Nylon (PA6-6, polyamide), is opposite to amorphous, it's a semi-crystalline material, the difference is that it's doesnt soften proportionnal to temp, it as no glass temp, but a melt temp. It always keeps hard, and when it reach the melt point, its becomes liquid immediately. There is always a bit degrees difference between solidstate and meltedstate, and very very small soft range. Melting is very brutal with these material, which is a good point for heat resistant purposes. (sorry, i don't speak english good enough to use the right words, i try to do with my ones).
Know that the melt temp for nylon is higher than 200°C, which matches to your customer's needs . Don't worry about moisture, it's only an issue while injecting, printing, or extruding nylon... Once the part is done, it takes bake moisture naturally a few hours after, around 0,02% and its changes nothing to its quality. Actually, this is the opposite, the best impact strengh (mecanical resistance) for nylon is when fully moistured. In plastics, injection molding (this is my work), sometimes, we put fresh made nylon parts into boiling water to get a faster moisture recovery, before sending them to customers. So, we are sure that parts are as strong as they should be.
Furthermore, you can still increase the heat resistance of nylon by including 20 or 30% of glassfiber inside... This is exactly the reason, when you look into your automotive engine, most of plastic parts are nylon-glassfiber-reinforced... And polyamide parts in an engine, are used for inlet manifold (oil steams...), cooling water transfert (which is hot...), as you see, it's what you need...
Nylocke wrote:ABS glass temp is too low, I think it's around 85. PC and Tritan are at the 110 mark. Generic Default might be able to chime in, I think he's talking about PEI printing?
about 110°c for standard quality ABS. But glass temp don't mean something useful. PP (polypropylene) glass is 10°C, PE (polyethene) glass is about -110°C.... Glass doesnt means that it melts, glass means that there are no more molecular moves into material. A plastic bag is easy to make the shape you want to even in winter because it's PE made... If it where cooled at -110°C it would no move anymore, like if it were wood or steel... It would break immediately because it's very thin.
0110-m-p wrote:PEEK would be best...glass transition temperature of about 150C, but still strong to about 240C. Looks like someone has been looking into it at least.
http://www.arevolabs.com/
PA66 (Nylon) is about 2$ per kilogram were PEEK could be more than 100$/kg and the more expensive PEI I worked with, was 40%/kg (in plastics, materials are sold in 25Kg bags of pellets)
PEI is fanstastic, and PEEK just awesome, could be more solid than steel, but very very expensive, need to be heated around 365°C to melt (YEAH 689°F!!), not sure you will print these high end material tomorrow... And for the prices, these are industrial prices, just look at the price of the nylon in industry, and in spool for home printing...
When I produce peek or pei parts, customers are called airbus or boeing.